Inside the Ebola outbreak with the CDC

By David Daigle, Special to CNN

Updated 1649 GMT (2349 HKT) August 13, 2014

The Ebola epidemic47 photos

Red Cross workers, wearing protective suits, carry the body of a person who died from Ebola during a burial in Monrovia, Liberia, on Monday, January 5. Since the epidemic started a little more than a year ago in a remote village in Guinea, the world has seen more than 10,000 deaths, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization. And that number is believed to be low, since there was widespread under-reporting of cases, according to WHO.

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Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish woman diagnosed with Ebola, is put on a plane in Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday, December 30. Cafferkey, a 39-year-old nurse who volunteered in Sierra Leone, was being transported to London for treatment.

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Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has her temperature taken before the opening of a new Ebola clinic Tuesday, November 25, in Monrovia.

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A child who survived the Ebola virus is fed by another survivor at a treatment center on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Tuesday, November 11.

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Health workers in Monrovia cover the body of a man suspected of dying from the Ebola virus on Friday, October 31.

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Kaci Hickox leaves her home in Fort Kent, Maine, to take a bike ride with her boyfriend on Thursday, October 30. Hickox, a nurse, recently returned to the United States from West Africa, where she treated Ebola victims. State authorities wanted her to avoid public places for 21 days -- the virus' incubation period. But Hickox, who twice tested negative for Ebola, said she would defy efforts to keep her quarantined at home.

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Crew members at an airport in Accra, Ghana, unload supplies sent from China on Wednesday, October 29.

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Health officials in Nairobi, Kenya, prepare to screen passengers arriving at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Tuesday, October 28.

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U.S. President Barack Obama hugs Ebola survivor Nina Pham in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday, October 24. Pham, one of two Dallas nurses diagnosed with the virus, was declared Ebola-free after being treated at a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The other nurse, Amber Vinson (not pictured), was treated in Atlanta and also declared Ebola-free.

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Health workers in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, transport the body of a person who is suspected to have died of Ebola on Tuesday, October 21.

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Health workers bury a body on the outskirts of Monrovia on Monday, October 20.

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Garteh Korkoryah, center, is comforted during a memorial service for her son, Thomas Eric Duncan, on Saturday, October 18, in Salisbury, North Carolina. Duncan, a 42-year-old Liberian citizen, died October 8 in a Dallas hospital. He was in the country to visit his son and his son's mother, and he was the first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola.

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Boys run from blowing dust as a U.S. military aircraft leaves the construction site of an Ebola treatment center in Tubmanburg, Liberia, on Wednesday, October 15.

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Aid workers from the Liberian Medical Renaissance League stage an Ebola awareness event October 15 in Monrovia. The group performs street dramas throughout Monrovia to educate the public on Ebola symptoms and how to handle people who are infected with the virus.

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Ebola survivors prepare to leave a Doctors Without Borders treatment center after recovering from the virus in Paynesville, Liberia, on October 12.

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A woman crawls toward the body of her sister as a burial team takes her away for cremation Friday, October 10, in Monrovia. The sister had died from Ebola earlier in the morning while trying to walk to a treatment center, according to her relatives.

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A person peeks out from the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States, was staying on Friday, October 3.

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A girl cries as community activists approach her outside her Monrovia home on Thursday, October 2, a day after her mother was taken to an Ebola ward.

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A health official uses a thermometer Monday, September 29, to screen a Ukrainian crew member on the deck of a cargo ship at the Apapa port in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Workers move a building into place as part of a new Ebola treatment center in Monrovia on September 28.

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Medical staff members at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Monrovia burn clothes belonging to Ebola patients on Saturday, September 27.

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Medics load an Ebola patient onto a plane at Sierra Leone's Freetown-Lungi International Airport on Monday, September 22.

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A few people are seen in Freetown during a three-day nationwide lockdown on Sunday, September 21. In an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus, people in Sierra Leone were told to stay in their homes.

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Supplies wait to be loaded onto an aircraft at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday, September 20. It was the largest single shipment of aid to the Ebola zone to date, and it was coordinated by the Clinton Global Initiative and other U.S. aid organizations.

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A child stops on a Monrovia street Friday, September 12, to look at a man who is suspected of suffering from Ebola.

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Health workers in Monrovia place a corpse into a body bag on Thursday, September 4.

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After an Ebola case was confirmed in Senegal, people load cars with household items as they prepare to cross into Guinea from the border town of Diaobe, Senegal, on Wednesday, September 3.

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Crowds cheer and celebrate in the streets Saturday, August 30, after Liberian authorities reopened the West Point slum in Monrovia. The military had been enforcing a quarantine on West Point, fearing a spread of the Ebola virus.

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A health worker wearing a protective suit conducts an Ebola prevention drill at the port in Monrovia on Friday, August 29.

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Volunteers working with the bodies of Ebola victims in Kenema, Sierra Leone, sterilize their uniforms on Sunday, August 24.

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A burial team from the Liberian Ministry of Health unloads bodies of Ebola victims onto a funeral pyre at a crematorium in Marshall, Liberia, on Friday, August 22.

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Dr. Kent Brantly leaves Emory University Hospital on Thursday, August 21, after being declared no longer infectious from the Ebola virus. Brantly was one of two American missionaries brought to Emory for treatment of the deadly virus.

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An Ebola Task Force soldier beats a local resident while enforcing a quarantine on the West Point slum on August 20.

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Local residents gather around a very sick Saah Exco, 10, in a back alley of the West Point slum on Tuesday, August 19. The boy was one of the patients that was pulled out of a holding center for suspected Ebola patients after the facility was overrun and closed by a mob on August 16. A local clinic then refused to treat Saah, according to residents, because of the danger of infection. Although he was never tested for Ebola, Saah's mother and brother died in the holding center.

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A burial team wearing protective clothing retrieves the body of a 60-year-old Ebola victim from his home near Monrovia on Sunday, August 17.

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Workers prepare the new Ebola treatment center on August 17.

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Liberian police depart after firing shots in the air while trying to protect an Ebola burial team in the West Point slum of Monrovia on August 16. A crowd of several hundred local residents reportedly drove away the burial team and their police escort. The mob then forced open an Ebola isolation ward and took patients out, saying the Ebola epidemic is a hoax.

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A crowd enters the grounds of an Ebola isolation center in the West Point slum on August 16. The mob was reportedly shouting, "No Ebola in West Point."

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A health worker disinfects a corpse after a man died in a classroom being used as an Ebola isolation ward Friday, August 15, in Monrovia.

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Health workers in Kenema screen people for the Ebola virus on Saturday, August 9, before they enter the Kenema Government Hospital.

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Aid worker Nancy Writebol, wearing a protective suit, gets wheeled on a gurney into Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on August 5. A medical plane flew Writebol from Liberia to the United States after she and her colleague Dr. Kent Brantly were infected with the Ebola virus in the West African country.

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Members of Doctors Without Borders adjust tents in the isolation area in Kailahun on July 20.

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Boots dry in the Ebola treatment center in Kailahun on July 20.

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Dr. Jose Rovira of the World Health Organization takes a swab from a suspected Ebola victim in Pendembu, Sierra Leone, on Friday, July 18.

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Red Cross volunteers disinfect each other with chlorine after removing the body of an Ebola victim from a house in Pendembu on July 18.

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A scientist separates blood cells from plasma cells to isolate any Ebola RNA and test for the virus Thursday, April 3, at the European Mobile Laboratory in Gueckedou, Guinea.

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Health specialists work Monday, March 31, at an isolation ward for patients at the facility in southern Guinea.

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Story highlights

The CDC has sent nine people to Lagos, Nigeria, to fight the Ebola outbreak

The World Health Organization says Nigeria has 12 suspected cases, three deaths

CDC team is helping with tracking the infection, training health care workers

There are nine of us from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in Lagos, Nigeria.

We arrived from different U.S. states, or from the CDC's polio team already in Nigeria,and possess varying skill sets, including infection control, global migration and quarantine, data management, epidemiology and communications.

We're here to work with colleagues and partners from Nigeria's Ministry of Health, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization to stop the largest Ebola outbreak in history -- the first in a densely populated, urban environment.

Nigeria is the latest country to become affected by the outbreak. The first person to die of Ebola here was an American named Patrick Sawyer, who arrived from Liberia. Now WHO suspects Nigeria has had 12 cases and three deaths.

Our team in Lagos is a small part of the CDC's effort to fight Ebola, with work going on in several African countries, and back in the United States at our headquarters in Atlanta. There, the CDC's Emergency Operations Center has activated its highest level to maintain 24/7 operations to coordinate the agency's efforts.

We are five hours ahead of Atlanta, a fact my family has yet to grasp as I receive texts during odd hours asking, "What's Lagos like?" and "What are you doing?"

Inside an Ebola outbreak epicenter

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Why we fear Ebola

A typical day for our team begins at a hotel -- one big advantage of an urban outbreak. After breakfast we move to one of several locations, including the hospital, U.S. Consulate or a training site, depending on the work to be done that day.

Team Lagos is working as part of a much larger team in Nigeria to find and isolate all possible patients, tracking down everyone who could have been exposed to Ebola, and educating the public about the risks.

A great deal has been accomplished in a short time. A Nigerian emergency operations center is up and running now, and we are about to move Ebola patients into a newly, remodeled treatment facility.

There are 60 folks on the contact tracing team, which has been tracking more than 200 people thought to have come in contact with the virus. These teams visit the contacts daily to take their temperatures and check to see if they have developed any symptoms. On Tuesday, 147 of the 152 contacts were visited and assessed. When difficulties arise locating contacts, additional teams are employed and efforts ramped up to conduct the tracing.

The Ebola response team in Nigeria recently saw 30 people finish the 21-day risk period -- the longest time period during which Ebola symptoms have been known to be present. These 30 people were able to leave the contact tracing list, which is a hopeful sign.

There is a great deal of fear in Lagos as many worry about a virus of which they know precious little. CDC communicators like myself work to provide accurate information to the public and health care workers. Health care workers are critical as they are on the front lines of this battle; WHO says 10% of the deaths during this epidemic have been health care workers.

Our infection control experts have been training workers on proper infection control and teaching them how to don Personal Protective Equipment properly, a critical task given this virus.

I was taking pictures of this training near the Ebola ward when one of the trainers came out of the "hot zone" and asked if anybody had a paperback to give one of the patients. I donated a weathered copy of Shakespeare's "Henry the IV, Part 1." (I always carry a book on deployments). So the Bard has entered the Ebola ward in Lagos.

One interesting aspect of this outbreak has been the rumors and misinformation spurred by Ebola. Last week, communicators were working quickly to respond to a rumor that bathing in or drinking salt water would prevent Ebola. I have seen local press coverage that notes two people may have died from attempting this treatment.

A newspaper headline shows the dangers of false information being spread in Nigeria about Ebola treatments.

As I write this, we are in a temporary emergency operations center at a psychiatric hospital, waiting for remodeling to be complete on our own center. We made the change with some grumbling but did not miss a beat -- flexibility is essential in an evolving outbreak situation.

Our work is made more difficult by traffic in the city, a lack of Internet connectivity and security, which is a concern. We typically make it back to the hotel late, anywhere between 9 and 11 p.m. local time and try to eat together.

Team members who gather are tired, and the outbreak dominates the conversation. But we also try to distract ourselves: On my third night, a team member asked, "Has anyone else noticed that the background music is all Celine Dione?" It was true. Turns out she has quite a few songs, and I am pretty sure we have heard them all.

I am not afraid of catching the Ebola virus. I know how Ebola is transmitted and will not put myself in jeopardy, thinking of my wife and four children at home.

The work is long, hard, challenging but worthwhile. The CDC team in Lagos is amazing, one of the best I have been on. And the larger response team that includes all our partners and our colleagues from Nigeria is doing important work to break the Ebola infection cycle.